Man with broken leg survives 4 days in Utah desert

A man crawled four days across the Utah desert after breaking his leg on a
solo hike, inspired by the film 127 Hours about a man who cut off his own
arm to save himself after being trapped by a boulder in the same canyon.

James Franco as Aron Ralston in Danny Boyle's film, '127 Hours'

11:02PM BST 25 Sep 2011

Amos Wayne Richards, 64, of Concord, North Carolina, is now recovering at home.

Canyonlands National Park rangers found Richards four days after he fell 10 feet in Little Blue John Canyon on Sept. 8. Along with the leg injury, he dislocated his shoulder but was able to work it back into place.

"It took me about 3 or 4 minutes to work my shoulder and get it back in place and once I got it back in place, I stood up and realised my ankle hurt a little bit," Mr Richards told WBTV in Charlotte.

Without mobile phone service and only two protein bars to eat, Mr Richards began crawling back to his car across the rocky terrain. He filled his water bottles with rain as he painstakingly retraced his steps, eventually dragging himself almost five miles.

"I was actually following my GPS, crawling right on top of my feet print that I had hiked in on," Mr Richards said.

Rangers first began looking for Richards September 9 after his campsite was found unattended, said Denny Ziemann, chief ranger for Canyonlands and Arches national parks. They discovered his car two days later at the trailhead for Little Blue John Canyon, which is part of the Canyonlands remote and rugged Maze District but technically outside park boundaries.

"The search was pretty quick and dirty" once they realised where Richards had gone hiking, Ranger Ziemann said. Within hours, a helicopter spotted Mr Richards – who used the flash on his camera to catch the pilot's attention – only a couple of miles (kilometres) from his car.

Mr Richards was treated for the shattered leg and dehydration at a hospital in Moab, Utah, before returning to North Carolina to recover.

Ranger Ziemann said the result could have been much worse for Mr Richards because he went hiking alone and without telling anybody about his plans. Temperatures in the region were in the 80s Fahrenheit (upper 20s Celsius) during the day and 60sF (upper teens C) at night.

"We make a lot of rescues of people, but we usually know where they are," he said. "They were either hiking with somebody and got hurt or if they were hiking alone, they told people where they were going."